IF IT AIN’T LOCAL – IT AIN’T GLOBAL - WAVES OF UNITY – NOVEMBER 11, 2012 – DALLAS, TEXAS

MOHAMMED AL-AMIN is the co-founder and chairman of DINA/myC2i.org – a non-profit outreach and buddy social network for Muslims with people of other faiths. He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School and serves on the school’s admission committee for Harvard in Dallas. He’s on the Industry Advisory Board of SMU School of engineering. He is a very successful national telecom businessman, who owns his own business and has three children.

He has an event that he’s doing November 11, 2012 at the Garland Civic Center where they are expecting 8,000 Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc., John Esposito, Hamsa Yusef, professional athletes that are Muslims, comedians, muscians – top names in our country will be there. I’ll also be speaking. Today he met with leaders from 30 evangelical churches in the metroplex at our church to tell them about it. I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you about it and ask him some questions.

WHY DO YOU WANT TO CONNECT WITH EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS?

We want to connect with people of all faiths, specifically evangelical Christians because of their conservative philosophy, which by the way is very common to Muslims. The reason we want to connect at the individual level so every evangelical Christian meaningfully knows 5 to 10 Muslims, thereby, alleviating any fear or suspicion about Muslims.

WHAT IS WAVES OF UNITY?

Waves of Unity is the first event of its kind. It is on November 11 at the Garland special events center, and is possibly the largest multi-faith religious gathering in North Texas this year, that aims to gather 8,000 people of all faiths for a day of fun, learning of other faiths, and meaningful dialogue to get to know each other. For more information visit http://www.wavesofunity.org

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO DO IT?

I was interviewed by the Dallas Morning News 3 weeks after 9-11. They ran the story on my family for 3 weeks. They did with one family, what I want to do with all Muslim families – so that the general public gets to know Muslims meaningfully and stop living in fear, suspicion, and dislike.

WHAT DO YOU SEE FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES?

I think we will lead the way in the world. We have the most educated accepting human beings on earth. I would say more so for Christians than Muslims, because we are first generation or second generation – whereas the Christian population has gone through several generations of involvement and called America home. Most Muslims have only recently begun to call America home.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE TREATED BY A CHRISTIAN?

As if I was one of their own. I would also want to say to Christians please keep an open mind and reach out to a Muslim at myc21.org – that is a web-site built to connect Muslims and people of other faiths, in your own zip code, across the country, wherever you feel comfortable. You can chat on skype or video – and then meet the person if you want.

Bob Roberts

Bob is the founder, senior leader, and chief spokesman for Glocal.net . His primary focus is to connect leaders and estabish relationships to explore transformation. Follow Bob on Twitter at @bobrobertsjr.